57 Managing All Portal Templates

With permission to manage all portal templates, you can modify and publish the templates created by others, and import or export templates.

Permissions:

To perform the tasks in this chapter, you must have the default permissions of the Application Specialist role, or the Portal Templates: Manage All permission. Note that the Portal Creator role does not have this permission by default. Users with this permission can manage all portal templates in WebCenter Portal on the Portal Templates page in WebCenter Portal administration. Create, rename, set access to, delete, publish, hide, and import or export portal templates.

With the default permissions of the Authenticated-User role, or the application-level Portal Templates: Create Portal Templates permission, users can create, rename, set access to, and delete their own portal templates on the Portal Templates page in either the Home portal or WebCenter Portal administration. This permission does not allow users to import, export, or publish portal templates. See Working with Portal Templates.

Topics:

• About Managing Portal Templates

• Viewing All Portal Templates

• Creating a New Portal Template

• Importing and Exporting Portal Templates

• Viewing Information About a Portal Template

• Searching for a Portal Template

• Renaming a Portal Template

• Setting Up Access to a Portal Template

• Publishing or Hiding a Portal Template

• Deleting a Portal Template

About Managing Portal Templates

When creating a portal, users can base it on the built-in portal template, their own custom portal template, or a published portal template created by others. Portal templates provide a consistent look and feel and an efficient way to get started creating a portal that is configured as required by an organization. For more information, see About Portal Templates.

Use the Portal Templates page in WebCenter Portal administration to manage every portal template in WebCenter Portal. With the default permissions of the Application Specialist role, or the Portal Templates: Manage All permission, you can create, rename, set access to, delete, publish, hide, and import or export portal templates.

Users with the Portal Templates: Create Portal Templates permission can create, rename, set access to, and delete their own portal templates on the Portal Templates page in either the Home portal or WebCenter Portal administration. This permission does not allow users to import, export, or publish portal templates.

Viewing All Portal Templates

On the Portal Templates page in WebCenter Portal administration, you can quickly see who created each portal template, and the date on which it was created.

To see a list of every portal template in WebCenter Portal, together with their description, creator, and other useful information:

1. From the Portals menu, select Administration.
2. Click the Portal Templates tab.

   Figure 57-1 Portal Templates Page in WebCenter Portal Administration

   
   Description of "Figure 57-1 Portal Templates Page in WebCenter Portal Administration"

Creating a New Portal Template

You cannot modify the built-in portal template, but any user with Portal Templates: Create Portal Templates permission can create new portal templates for use by all users to create portals. This permission is granted to the Authenticated User role by default.

To create a new portal template, you start by creating a portal based on an existing template, and customize it according to your requirements. Then, you can create a new portal template based on the customized portal that you have developed. During the creation of a portal template, you can select to inherit the documents, lists, member information, roles, or pages from the source portal. The security settings, including Advanced Permissions (if applicable), for the source portal are also copied by the template.

Users with the default permissions of the Application Specialist role (or any user with Portal Templates: Manage All permission) can publish any portal template for others to use; otherwise, it remains private and hidden from others.

Note:

The Portal Creator role does not have default permissions to create or manage portal templates.

To create a portal template:

1. Go to the Portal Templates page in either the Home portal or WebCenter Portal administration:

   • In the Home portal, click the Portal Templates tab. If this tab is not showing, click the Actions icon and select Personalize Pages, where you can select Show Page.

   • From the Portals menu, select Administration, then click the Portal Templates tab.

2. Click Create to open the Create dialog.

   Note:

   There must be at least one portal available to use as the basis for the new portal template. Otherwise, Create is not active.

   Figure 57-2 Create a Portal Template Dialog: Setup Step

   
   Description of "Figure 57-2 Create a Portal Template Dialog: Setup Step"
3. In the Setup step, enter a suitable Portal Template Name and (optionally) Description. Enter a name that describes the portal template and other WebCenter Portal users will recognize. You can later rename the template as desired.

   Portal template names can contain only alphanumeric characters and underscores (spaces and special characters, such as & and #, are not allowed). The maximum allowable length is 200 characters. The following reserved keywords are not allowed as the full portal template name in either upper or lower case, or a combination of both—admin, builder, group, groups, home, last, page, pages, my portals, my spaces, portal, portals, space, spaces, system, webcenter, webcenter administration, WebCenter Portal, webcenter portals, webcenter space, webcenter spaces. These reserved words are allowable as part of a longer name (for example, Sales Group).

   Note:

   WebCenter Portal removes any unsupported special characters (such as -) and character spaces in the display name specified here to derive the initial internal name for the portal template. For example, a display name My Mega-Template generates the internal name MyMegaTemplate.

4. From the Category list, select a category under which to list the portal template when creating a portal, or leave as <None> if no category is suitable, then click Next.

   In the portal creation wizard, the portal template will be listed under the selected category heading, or under More... if you do not select a category.

5. In the Portals step, select a portal from the list (which displays portals that you created or have permissions to manage) to use as the basis for your new portal template, then click Next.

   Figure 57-3 Create a Portal Template Dialog: Portals Step

   
   Description of "Figure 57-3 Create a Portal Template Dialog: Portals Step"
6. In the Content step, select the services that contain data that you want the portal template to inherit from the parent portal.

   Note:

   • The security settings of all pages in the new portal template default to Inherit Parent Security so that the pages in all portals created from the portal template initially inherit access settings from the permissions established for the portal.

   • List definitions are always copied; checking Lists in this step specifies that you want to copy the list data, too.

   • By default, all portal assets are copied. If you do not want your template to inherit all portal assets, you can later edit the portal template to remove individual assets (such as task flows or data controls) that you do not want to include.

   • If you select Members Info, the Roles Info option is also selected. By selecting Members Info, you are copying the portal members and custom roles from the portal you selected as the basis for the new template into the new template that you are creating.

   • If you select Roles Info and do not select Members Info, you are copying only the roles into your new template. Only the custom roles that are included in the portal you selected as the basis for the new template are copied into the new template.

   • If Advanced Permissions has been specified in the portal that is used to create a new portal template and you select both Members Info (and by default Roles Info) or only Roles Info when creating the portal template, then the specified advanced permissions are included in the portal template (and subsequently in a portal that is created using the template).

   • If custom page permissions are specified for roles or individual users in a portal that is later used to create a new portal template, then only the custom page permissions specified for the roles (not individual users) are included in the portal template (and subsequently in a portal that is created using the portal template).

   Figure 57-4 Create a Portal Template Dialog: Content Step

   
   Description of "Figure 57-4 Create a Portal Template Dialog: Content Step"
7. Click Create.

   • The new portal template displays on your Portal Templates page in the Home portal and on the Portal Templates page in WebCenter Portal administration.

   • By default, the template is private, which means that other users will not see it on their Portal Templates page in the Home portal, and it is not available for selection when they create a new portal.

   • Users granted the Portal Templates: Manage All permission can manage all portal templates and make them public.

Importing and Exporting Portal Templates

This section describes how to import and export portal templates:

• Importing Portal Templates

• Exporting Portal Templates

System administrators can also import and export portals and portal templates using WLST commands. To find out more about these WLST commands and how to migrate the back-end data associated with portals, see Deploying Portals, Templates, Assets, and Extensions in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal.

Importing Portal Templates

With the default permissions of the Application Specialist role, or the Portal Templates: Manage All permission, you can import portal templates from a portal archive (.par file) into WebCenter Portal.

On import, all portal templates included in the archive are re-created. If a portal template exists, then it is deleted and replaced. If a portal template does not exist, then it is created.

Newly imported portal templates are not immediately available for general use. You must publish the imported templates to make them available to everyone.

See Publishing or Hiding a Portal Template.

Portal templates that use document services (files, folders, wikis, blogs) automatically own a content folder on WebCenter Portal's back-end content repository. The content folder is included in the portal template archive in a .zip file located at: transport.mar\oracle\webcenter\lifecycle\importexport\data\oracle-webcenter-doclib\docsexport.zip

Note:

Portal template archives do not include web content/pages referenced by the portal template that is stored outside the template's content folder, for example, information displayed through Content Presenter that is not stored in the template's content folder. Similarly, template archives do not include shared assets. You must migrate all dependent content to the target so it is accessible to the imported template. If you do not move all dependent content to the target server it will be missing when you import the portal template.

An option to exclude the content folder is available using the importWebCenterPortals WLST command, described in Importing Portal Templates from an Archive Using WLST in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal.

To import one or more portal templates from a .par file:

1. On the application-level Portal Templates page, click Import in the toolbar.

   The Import Portal Templates pane opens.

   Figure 57-5 Importing Portal Templates

   
   Description of "Figure 57-5 Importing Portal Templates"
2. Specify the location of your portal template archive (.par file):

   • Look On My Computer. Click in the input field or click Browse to open the File Upload dialog and navigate to the .par file on your local file system.

   • Look On WebCenter Portal Server. Enter the path on the server where WebCenter Portal is deployed, including the archive file name. For example, /tmp/MyPortalTemplateExport.par. You can specify any shared location that is accessible from WebCenter Portal.

3. Click Browse Archive to review the content available for import.

   Figure 57-6 Importing Portal Templates

   
   Description of "Figure 57-6 Importing Portal Templates"

   The names of all the WebCenter Portal templates in the specified archive display in the table. The Type column indicates when there is a conflict between the portal templates in the archive and those which exist on the target:

   • New - A portal template with this name does not exist on the target. On import a new template is created.

   • Replace - A portal template with this name and the same GUID exists on the target. The existing template is deleted on import and replaced with the version in the archive.

   • Conflict - A portal template with this name exists on the target but the template on the target has a different GUID to the template you are trying to import. Or similarly, this template has the same GUID as one of the templates in the target but the template names do not match.

     If the import process detects a conflict between the portal templates you are trying to import and those which exist on the target, you must resolve the issue. For example, if the conflict is due to matching names but different GUIDs you could either change the name of the source portal template and create a new export archive, or rename the conflicting portal template in the target application and import the same archive.

4. Click Import.
5. If you are replacing an existing portal template, click Yes to confirm the overwrite.

   Any content in the portal template archive will be included in the import. An information message displays when all templates import successfully.

6. Monitor progress in the Import Portal Templates dialog. When the import is complete, click Close.

   Figure 57-7 Import Portal Templates Progress

   
   Description of "Figure 57-7 Import Portal Templates Progress"
7. To publish the portal template to make it available to all WebCenter Portal users, select the template name, click the Actions menu, and select Make Public.

   The template is published and displays on the Portal Templates page in the Home portal for all users.

Exporting Portal Templates

With the default permissions of the Application Specialist role, or the Portal Templates: Manage All permission, you can export portal templates from WebCenter Portal to a portal archive (.par file) and deploy them on another portal server. Built-in templates cannot be exported.

While export and import utilities are primarily used to move information between WebCenter Portal instances, the portal template export feature is also useful as a backup service, and for sharing and exchanging templates with others.

Portal templates can contain pages, documents, lists, and security information such as custom roles and member details.

When you export a portal template, all this information is packaged in a portal data file (.pdr). The PDR file contains a metadata archive (.mar file) and a single XML file containing security policy information for the template. The export process packages up one or more template .pdr files to an archive that you can save to your local file system or to a remote server file system.

As template data is included in the portal template archive, you do not need to manually migrate any template data to the target server.

Templates that use document tools (files, folders, wikis, blogs) automatically own a content folder on WebCenter Portal’s back-end content repository. When you use WebCenter Portal to export portal templates, the content stored in this folder is automatically included in the portal template archive (.pdr) for easy deployment to another target server. The folder is added to a .zip file located at: transport.mar\oracle\webcenter\lifecycle\importexport\data\oracle-webcenter-doclib\docsexport.zip

Note:

Portal template archives do not include web content or pages referenced by the portal template that is stored at any other location, for example, information displayed through Content Presenter that is not stored in the portal template's content folder. Only the folder assigned to the portal template on WebCenter Portal's back-end content repository is included with the portal template archive.

You can save export archives to your local file system or to a remote server file system.

To export one or more portals templates from WebCenter Portal:

1. On the application-level Portal Templates page, select the portal template to export by highlighting the row in the table.

   Ctrl+click rows to select more than one template.

2. Click Export in the toolbar.

   The Export Portal Template pane opens. All the portal templates that you select are listed.

   Figure 57-8 Exporting Portal Templates

   
   Description of "Figure 57-8 Exporting Portal Templates"
3. If you want to exclude a portal template, click its Delete icon.
4. Change the name of the portal archive (with the file extension .par) or accept the default name.

   The default file name for the portal archive includes a random number to ensure uniqueness: webcenter_random_number.par

5. Click Export.

   Note:

   • Including content folders increases the size of the portal template archive. If you are exporting a large number of portal templates or large content folders, take care that your archive does not exceed the maximum upload size for files (2 GB by default). If necessary, you can ask your system administrator to increase this setting.

   • If you are managing legacy portal templates with assets that store artifacts in MDS, Oracle recommends that you relocate all dependent artifacts from MDS to your content repository. If you choose not to move artifacts stored in MDS, you can use MDS WLST commands exportMetadata/importMetadata to move the MDS content another time. For example:

     exportMetadata(application='webcenter', server='WC_Portal', toLocation='/tmp/content', docs='/oracle/webcenter/siteresources/scopedMD/shared/**')

     importMetadata(application='webcenter', server='WC_Portal', fromLocation='/tmp/content', docs='/oracle/webcenter/siteresources/scopedMD/shared/**')Notes

6. Monitor progress in the Export Portal Templates dialog.

   Figure 57-9 Export Portal Templates Progress

   
   Description of "Figure 57-9 Export Portal Templates Progress"
7. When the export process is complete, specify a location for the export archive (.par). Select one of:

   • Download. Saves the export .par file to your local file system.

     Your browser downloads and save the archive locally. The actual download location depends on your browser set up.

   • Save to Server. Saves the export .par file to a server location. For example, /tmp. Ensure that there are write permissions on the server directory that you specify.

     After clicking Save to Server, enter the Server Location and then click Save.

8. Click Close.

The export archive (.par) is saved to the specified location.

Viewing Information About a Portal Template

Note:

The Portal Creator role does not have default permissions to view or manage portal templates.

To view information about a portal template:

1. Go to the Portal Templates page in either the Home portal or WebCenter Portal administration:

   • In the Home portal, click the Portal Templates tab. If this tab is not showing, click the Actions icon and select Personalize Pages, where you can select Show Page.

   • From the Portals menu, select Administration, then click the Portal Templates tab.

2. Click in the row of the portal template that you want to learn about, then from the Actions menu, select About Portal Template.

   The About Portal Template dialog opens.

   Figure 57-10 About Portal Template Dialog

   
   Description of "Figure 57-10 About Portal Template Dialog"
3. Explore the information in the About Portal Template dialog:

   • Name: Internal name of the portal template displayed in the portal URL. You cannot change the internal name of a portal template.

   • Display Name: Display name of the portal template. This name displays in places where the templates are available for selection, such as the Create a Portal dialog and the Portal Templates page. You cannot change the display name of an out-of-the-box portal template. To change the display name of a custom portal template that you create, see Renaming a Portal Template.

   • Internal ID: ID of the portal template, which other applications may use to reference this portal template.

   • Description: A description of the portal template, specified when creating the portal template. You cannot modify the description of a portal template, unless you rename the template, where you can enter a new description in the Rename dialog, as described in Renaming a Portal Template.

   • Created By: User name of the portal template creator.

   • Date Created: Date and time that the portal template was created.

Searching for a Portal Template

Global search does not search portal assets, such as portal templates, page templates, resource catalogs, and so on. The Filter field on the Portal Templates page is useful for searching for portal template names or descriptions when your application includes a large number of portal templates.

Note:

The Portal Creator role does not have default permissions to view or search for portal templates.

To search for a portal template by a string in the Name or Description:

1. Go to the Portal Templates page in either the Home portal or WebCenter Portal administration:

   • In the Home portal, click the Portal Templates tab. If this tab is not showing, click the Actions icon and select Personalize Pages, where you can select Show Page.

   • From the Portals menu, select Administration, then click the Portal Templates tab.

2. In the Filter field, enter a search string and click the Filter icon.

   Figure 57-11 Filter Icon

   

   The Portal Templates page displays portal templates where the search string is found in the Name or Description.

3. To clear the current search string and display all portal templates, click the Clear Filter icon.

   Figure 57-12 Clear Filter Icon

   

Renaming a Portal Template

To rename a portal template:

1. Go to the Portal Templates page in either the Home portal or WebCenter Portal administration:

   • In the Home portal, click the Portal Templates tab. If this tab is not showing, click the Actions icon and select Personalize Pages, where you can select Show Page.

   • From the Portals menu, select Administration, then click the Portal Templates tab.

2. Click in the row of the portal template.
3. From the Actions menu, select Rename Portal Template Display Name to open the Rename Portal Template Display Name dialog.
4. In the Display Name field, enter a new name for the portal template.
5. Optionally, enter a Description.
6. Click OK.

Setting Up Access to a Portal Template

You can grant specific users and groups read-only or manage access to a portal template that you have permissions to manage.

To set up access to a portal template:

1. Go to the Portal Templates page in either the Home portal or WebCenter Portal administration:

   • In the Home portal, click the Portal Templates tab. If this tab is not showing, click the Actions icon and select Personalize Pages, where you can select Show Page.

   • From the Portals menu, select Administration, then click the Portal Templates tab.

2. Click in the row of the portal template.
3. From the Actions menu, select Set Template Access to open the .Set Template Access dialog

   Figure 57-13 Set Template Access Dialog

   
   Description of "Figure 57-13 Set Template Access Dialog"
4. In the Set Template Access dialog:

   • Click Add Users to open the Search Users dialog where you can select from a list of users or search for a user name.

   • Click Add Groups to open the Search Groups dialog where you can search for a user group.

   For tips on searching for a user or group in the identity store, see Searching for a User or Group in the Identity Store.

5. For each user or user group listed in the Set Template Access dialog, specify which level of access to grant (one permission per user or user group):

   • Select the View check box to grant read-only access to the portal template.

   • Select the Manage check box to grant full access to rename, set access to, delete publish or hide the portal template.

6. Click OK.

Publishing or Hiding a Portal Template

When you create a portal template, it is private by default. This means that only you as the template creator can see the template on your personal Portal Templates page in the Home portal. To make the template available to users, you must publish it.

Note:

To publish or hide a portal template, you need the default permissions of the Application Specialist role, or the Portal Templates: Manage All permission. Note that the Portal Creator role does not have this permission by default. Users with the Portal Templates: Create Portal Templates permission can create, rename, set access to, and delete their own portal templates, but cannot publish a template.

To publish or hide portal templates:

1. Go to the Portal Templates page in either the Home portal or WebCenter Portal administration:

   • In the Home portal, click the Portal Templates tab. If this tab is not showing, click the Actions icon and select Personalize Pages, where you can select Show Page.

   • From the Portals menu, select Administration, then click the Portal Templates tab.

2. Click in the row of the portal template to publish or hide.
3. From the Actions menu, select:

   • Make Public to publish the template to all WebCenter Portal users.

   • Remove Public Access to remove the template from the portal templates list in the Home portal for all users, except for the template creator and those users who have specifically been granted View or Manage access in the Set Template Access dialog.

4. In the confirmation prompt, confirm your selection.

   Note:

   If another user is in the process of creating a new portal, and you remove public access from the portal template selected for the portal before the user has completed creating the portal, the template becomes invalid for the portal and the user receives an error.

Deleting a Portal Template

Deleting a portal template does not affect the portals that were created using the portal template.

Note:

The built-in portal template cannot be deleted. However, users with the default permissions of the Application Specialist role, or the Portal Templates: Manage All permission, can hide the built-in portal template from everyone's view .

Deleting a portal template does not affect the portals that were created using the portal template.

To delete a portal template when it is no longer required:

1. Go to the Portal Templates page in either the Home portal or WebCenter Portal administration:

   • In the Home portal, click the Portal Templates tab. If this tab is not showing, click the Actions icon and select Personalize Pages, where you can select Show Page.

   • From the Portals menu, select Administration, then click the Portal Templates tab.

2. Click in the row of the portal template.
3. From the Actions menu, select Delete Portal Template.
4. In the confirmation prompt, click Delete.